Has “thou shalt not bear false witness” been removed from the 10 commandments when I wasn’t looking or something?

http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com Rev. Ouabache

I’m dying to know who is really behind this site.

http://www.facebook.com/deborah.robertson Debbie Lucy Robertson

Not just for pregnancy prevention either, HIV/AIDS is a big reality, use condoms!

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JBAMPHNDKNSKDNVTY3VRYGWMYQ Jack

I wince at the thought of this being aimed at children that don’t know better. I mean bright colours, cute design and water balloons… it definitely seems more attractive than all the CDC pages combined.

http://www.theaunicornist.com Mike D

I have to wonder if this site is a hoax. I sure hope it is.

jdm8

I think it is an AstroTurf for a certain contraceptive service or product. Just look at the “A Better Way” tab on their site. The site maintainers use a Whois blocking service, so it’s hard to prove conclusively, but the pieces fell into place when I read that page.

The biggest problem with condoms is not the condoms, but user error.

mikespeir

Hey, if it sell condoms and helps keep the manufacturers afloat….

EivindKjorstad

Indeed. Awfully strange with a site “against contraception in marriage” that then goes on to spout about the wonderful properties of one certain contraception-method.

PostBibleCollegeAtheist

From what I read is that all studies report HIV reduction while using condoms. Which the site seems to not deny (they likely revised). But it also states(obviously) that acts without condoms still pose possibility to spread infection. And they seem to attack this idea that using a condom for vaginal sex is unsafe because not using a condom for oral/anal will still get you HIV. So I guess what they are trying to say is you will get HIV from having anal sex if you use a condom for vaginal sex? I’m lost at this point.

Medea Ginger Hertz

It looks like their contraception is to track the woman’s fertility cycle. Not exactly the best way in my opinion.

machintelligence

I have heard that bearing false witness is more akin to lying under oath than common everyday lying. Lying isn’t illegal, but you can do jail time for perjury.

William Snedden

Well, not really. The “Better Way” that is promoted is nothing other than the good old “rhythm method” that has been the touted by the Catholic Church for decades.

Tainda

WTFBBQBATMAN???

Dexeron

Apparently the good Catholics in this moral tale just came from a dress rehersal for their performance of “The Music Man”.

http://www.holytape.etsy.com Holytape

So not only are they spreading falsehoods about condoms, but they are promoting physically assaulting random people. A water ballon from 5 stories up is going to hurt like hell. Way to go catholics! Not only to you get to increase the rate of STD and unwanted pregnancies, but you can up the concussion rate. Oh, how about telling people to aim for small children and old people. Or telling them to freeze the water-filled condoms. Those random people are all sinners anyways. That would be hilarious!

Stev84

Lying for Jesus has always been ok

The Other Weirdo

I wonder if such a legalistic interpretation was the original intent.

Gus Snarp

Condoms, when used correctly and consistently, are highly effective at preventing transmission of STDs, including HIV, and at preventing unwanted pregnancy. Anyone saying otherwise is just flat out lying.

One thing I’ve been curious about lately is the 98% effective figure you sometimes hear. I’ve been using condoms for birth control exclusively my entire life. My wife and I had no trouble conceiving when we chose to, which suggests we’re not some kind of anomaly (and previous partners now have children, so I assume they’re not unusual either), but I’ve used condoms enough that if there were actually a 2% failure rate, some unintended pregnancy would have been highly likely to occur. So I looked it up. In studies of couples exclusively using condoms correctly and consistently (though I’m not sure how they ensure that…) 2 out of 100 experienced a failure (I honestly don’t remember if that meant a pregnancy occurred or a condom broke or what) over the course of a year. The actual failure rate per use turns out to be more like 2 in 8,000. Which I think makes it much less statistically likely that I would experience a failure. It also means that the 98% figure is somewhat deceptive. It makes people think condoms are less effective than they actually are. Someone with a very basic knowledge of statistics might think that if they have sex every day using condoms they’re probably going to have in the neighborhood of 6 failures. But that’s not the case at all. What the number really say is that if you have sex with condoms 8,000 times there’s a good chance 2 of them will fail. Or if you have sex the average number of times per year that the study participants did, you can expect two failures in 100 years of having sex.

Of course, it still means any given condom can fail at any given moment, but it does mean the probability is very low. To translate this into one more different kind of statistic, it means that instead of a probability of failure in any give use of a condom of 0.02, the real figure is 0.00025. I honestly think that the dissemination of the 98% figure is a great disservice to the cause of getting people to use condoms.

Also, condoms are awesome. Really, they are not a big deal to use at all and they work. Unless you want a baby, or are in a long term relationship with clear guidelines on who sleeps with whom (I think of this as a monogamous relationship with someone you live with, but I’m sure there are other ways of working it out so that the number and STD status of partners is controlled) and using another effective form of birth control, you should use a condom every. single. time.

Sorry, I just looked up the statistics about a week ago, so I had all this in my head and wanted to get it out.

Gordon Duffy

I’ll give you a clue, it rhymes with “Bat cholic Birch” = nothing brings sexy back like bishops

The Other Weirdo

I’ve had a Catholic bishop–online, so take that with a grain of salt–tell me recently that abstinence is the only safe method. Which is absolutely true, but then I realized that Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is an all-or-nothing, black-and-white proposition. That’s their approach to the afterlife, and that’s their approach to safe sex in particular and real life in general. If something isn’t 100%, abandon it.

OverlappingMagisteria

It’s this hypothesis that promoting condoms creates a culture of promiscuity. Although condoms do DIRECTLY prevent HIV, they claim that using them will make people have so much promiscuous sex that the the percentage of people who have sex unprotected will rise, and HIV will spread even more. I suppose they are assuming that people only use condoms for vaginal sex.

This hypothesis is completely contradicted by all available evidence. Rates of promiscuity barely, if at all, change and HIV rates plummet in areas that have common condom use. But why should evidence get in the way of dogma?

Gus Snarp

I’m curious about one thing. I’m not going to grace that site with my hits, but I wonder if it’s officially associated with or endorsed by the Catholic Church or just put up by some Catholics because they feel it supports a Catholic view. I think this graphic is reprehensible, and the actual policies of the Church regarding condom use have been reprehensible as well, but I think this distinction is important. When we’re arguing about what it means to be Catholic based on the rules of a single, hierarchical organization, we ought to be careful about how we label things with Big C Catholic, because it tends to imply endorsement by the organization that is the Catholic Church, when we all know this is often not the case. That crazy Vortex guy on YouTube does not represent the views of the Church in any way, neither, frankly, does Bill Donahue and the Catholic League. I think we can criticize things that are based on Catholic beliefs and make the point that Catholic teachings support the ideas without claiming that a given marketing effort is officially endorsed by the Church. I guess I’m just saying we should be clear about what the adjective “Catholic” means when applied to a website or organization other than the Church.

OverlappingMagisteria

Marc Barnes of the fellow Patheos blog “Bad Catholic” is. He is living up to his name (or does this site make him a “good” Catholic? They have such confusing ways of defining those terms…)

It’s especially strange when you consider the Catholic churches reasoning behind the ban on contraception. It’s a no-no because, according to them, any sex must be geared toward procreation, or at least the possibility of procreation. But they have no problem using Natural Family Planning to prevent pregnancy (or at least avoid it as best as possible.) And they will admit that condoms arn’t 100% effective, so even using a condom still has the possibility of resulting in a pregnancy. Both methods are just imperfect ways of avoiding pregenancy

It’s like you are allowed to prevent pregnancy, but only in ways that are not as effective. I wonder what the cutoff percentage is? Is a contraceptive that is 75% effective OK? What about 80% effective?

OverlappingMagisteria

It is made by lay-Catholics. Nothing official. (Have you seen the Vatican webpage? The design is atrocious. This site actually looks good.)

More accurately, Marc Barnes of the fellow Patheos blog “Bad Catholic” and others are in charge. Here is a link to his blog post taking credit for it:

Somehow seeing it promoted there makes it feel even more irresponsible.

Lagerbaer

Also note that in this “2 out of 100 couples using condoms” scenario, getting pregnant doesn’t even need to mean that the condom actually physically broke. There can be a number of other screw ups, such as putting it on too late, removing incorrectly, etc.

Lagerbaer

It’s about “mechanical/chemical” vs “natural”. One weird Catholic (in an apologetics book from Germany) said: “You wouldn’t put a plastic sheet over field and then throw seeds on it. That’s unnatural”. You are free, of course, to spill your seed in the winter or whatever other time when nothing will grow on the field.

Makes perfect sense, right? Because the woman is a field you must plow. It’s not like the plowing has any inherent value to it.

Gus Snarp

Yeah, that number is supposed to be “correct use”, but I imagine, not having read the actual study, that correctness of use is self reported, it’s not hard to imagine that in the heat of the moment somebody screwed up and didn’t report it later. There’s a decent chance that accounts for some of the failure.

Tim

Also bear in mind that a “failure” doesn’t always mean pregnancy. A failure before you cum is lower risk than one afterwards. (although of course not zero risk)

Tim

Not a good way at all although not completely ineffective for a woman with good self control and a regular cycle. The problem with such contraptions is that they tend to tell you to aviod sex on the days when (for hormonal reasons) you feel at your horniest.

i’ve done a fair bit of prefssional work on these ovulation prediction contraptions as a Patent Attorney and I can tell you that the Inventors I work with have abandoned marketing them as contraceptives and sell them as an aid to conception. The profits are higher that way and the product liability issues much lower (would you prefer to be sued for the cost a bringing up a child by a couple who used your machine as a contraceptive and got pregnant, or by a couple who used the machine as an aid to conception and didn’t get pregnant – what would they sue you for the time they wasted having sex?)

michael both

Great summary – thanks. Reminds me of my Mum, who is a (now-retired) forensic scientist, and who used to bombard me with all sorts of stats regarding condom usage that she had researched as part of her job. I remember her telling me, quite seriously, “One condom is good, but two is much better”.

I replied along the lines that I’d find a compromise between her suggestion of two, and the Catholic insistence on zero, as that appeared to provide the best outcome in terms of safety AND sensation. :^)

Gringa

It does work – my husband and I used it because I had some reactions to birth control, and then we used it (generally) to achieve conception. However, it is very, VERY difficult to follow. I’d bet it is only less effective than condoms because the chances of user error are so much higher. Condoms are way more dummy-proof, and therefore I’d argue that they are way more effective in the real world, not to mention the added STD protection that condoms provide.

Gus Snarp

Funny! But I’ve always heard that using two is a bad idea, as friction between the two can lead to failure. I have no idea whether that’s true, I think I first heard it in high school and it could be entirely made up…

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/FDGYHBEWVNGUG763L5X4TON3JQ Nazani14

I used to have a Catholic family planning book that was actually quite useful when I was trying to get pregnant. Had info about clues to finding your most fertile days that I’ve not seen anywhere else. Anyway, it said anything that blocks the sperm is against God’s will, so to collect a sperm sample, Catholics are supposed to have sex using a condom that has a couple of pinholes in it in order to collect a sample for testing. I swear I’m not making this up. Using condoms to prevent pregnancy or taking your dixie cup to the bathroom to produce a sample is equivalent to onanism.

http://dogmabytes.com/ C Peterson

It’s definitely possible. There is no consensus at all amongst biblical scholars as to the meaning of the phrase “bear false witness”, with interpretations ranging from legal testimony, through lying that impugns someone’s reputation, to lying in general.

Like most things found in the Bible, virtually nothing is known of the original intent or context, and this can therefore mean just about anything you want it to mean.

http://LosingMyReligion.ca Chad Kettner

It made me laugh to read “Tear gently! A broken condom is useless” and “Tear along one side of the foil, being careful not to rip the condom inside”… as if condoms break SUPER easily.

http://www.facebook.com/chrisalgoo Chris Algoo

I suppose we’ve known for a few thousand years what Catholics think of women!

Carolyn

In every contraceptive failure comparison, the 2% rate is the percentage of couples, using the method over a year, that experience pregnancy. It’s not how many condoms break, since a pregnancy can result from an imperceptible tear, or a leak, or other things I can’t think of off the top of my head.

(Usual use includes not always using it for condoms, or using them after some penetration, or so on. Perfect use doesn’t include these cases. I think usual use has somewhere around 75% effectiveness? I have an impression they use some of the face-saving tricks like the “say yes if you’ve ever forgotten a condom or if the coin you flipped turned up heads” answers to get a better grasp of actual use. I’m a lousy social scientist, but man I loved learning survey methods.)

The big question is where people get the failure rate for the new and improved rhythm method that they claim is about the same. I haven’t seen any source not from the catholic church for it, and doubt it (though I’m willing to be convinced) unless you pick a population of women with predictable cycles, and couples very committed to this idea.

http://dogmabytes.com/ C Peterson

Statistics demonstrate that automobile safety belts, when used properly, reduce the number of serious traffic injuries by 50% and fatalities by 60-70%

By the logic used on the 1Flesh site, they would argue against seat belt use, because

In fact, by their reasoning, we should abandon all safety devices and equipment. Perfect efficacy is apparently the only acceptable standard.

Glasofruix

I suppose she meant, keep one spare ready.

http://dogmabytes.com/ C Peterson

Who cares about AIDS? Let them all die, and God will sort it out.

(If it was good advice in the 13th century, it still must be good, right?)

Notsurprised

I know this is a very serious discussion (and a very serious issue). But what I get from this graphic is that the church wants it’s followers to be randomly mean to innocent bystanders. I mean really? Throw condoms at people from a building? It’s disgusting, mean, could be considered a hate crime under certain circumstances. That’s what the kids should learn in Sunday school right?

Parse

Thank you, Bad Catholic, for this wonderful illustration… of why people see Catholic positions on birth control as inhumane. It’s not enough that they insist on pushing abstinence; they lie shamelessly about other forms of birth control. If you read the comments in favor of this on the Bad Catholic site, it boils down to one basic point: If people (both Catholic and non) use birth control, we won’t know who to shame for having sex!

http://twitter.com/enuma enuma

The thing the 1Flesh(deliberately?) overlooks is that even if condom use increases promiscuity, it’d have to raise promiscuity by a couple orders of magnitude before the negatives of increased promiscuity offset the benefits of condoms.

My uncle once argued that it shouldn’t be mandatory for cars to have seat belts or airbags because the presence of these safety features lead people to drive less carefully, his implication being that these features actually make us less safe. I agreed that they very well could lead people to drive less carefully, although, as with promiscuity, I think he’s imagining a much bigger increase in careless driving than than we see in reality.

The real problem is that even if his assumption that seat belts and airbags increase careless driving is true, it doesn’t matter. There has been a clear and significant downward trend in motor vehicle fatalities since we started requiring these safety features, even as the total number of cars on the road and total number of miles driven have been going up. He, like 1Flesh, is starting with an idea that is slightly true, and then using it to make a conclusion that is totally at odds with reality. Unfortunately since a tiny part of their premise is trivially correct (safety devices can correlate with increases in certain behavior), they can’t be convinced that these devices directly prevent far more harm than they may indirectly cause.

Ignatius Antioch

Except… there is little evidence that anyone in the thirteenth century ever advised that. The person who *claimed* that it was said was a bitter enemy of the person who is supposed to have said it. Trusting the accuser would be equivalent to the “birther” argument.

I know that is not the substance of your post, but it is one of those historical inaccuracies which *irks* me.

rlrose328

Oops… Page Not Found… very interesting.

http://twitter.com/KevinSagui Kevin Sagui

Stop it, you’re ruining the greatest Google search ever for me!

kcarrandale

You can still view the cache. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:594vFK-B4HIJ:www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/06/the-secret-is-out.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

AxeGrrl

Perfect analogy

Parse

It’s amusing (in that laugh-so-you-don’t-cry sense) to read about things that people in favor of Rhythm Method 2: Electric Boogaloo say: - It’s sinful to use artificial means to prevent pregnancy (by using pills or condoms), but it isn’t sinful to use artificial means to prevent pregnancy (by tracking symptoms). - That because they know the risks of having sex, any pregnancies while using ‘natural family planning’ are expected, and thus shouldn’t be considered failures of the system. - That avoiding sex when it’s most desirable isn’t a weakness of the system. - That this counts as a form of abstinence, and therefore abstinence works and should be taught in schools. It’s very informative to search on Google Scholar for “fertility awareness based methods”; one of the most informational results (here) is from 2005, so it’s a bit old, but its abstract contains this wonderful quote as its summary:

Despite intensive training and ongoing support, most participants in these trials discontinued prematurely. The comparative efficacy of these methods remains unknown. However, with the ovulation and symptothermal methods, pregnancies appear to be common; method continuation rates are low.

Gus Snarp

Hah, Bad Catholic just memory holed the post where the 1flesh website was announced, as well as another embarrassingly ignorant post previous to it.

Um, also, throwing water balloons from the roof of a 5-story building CAN actually hurt people….

Bb811moon

i have to say i always have wanted to do that. resisting the urge to go find a tall building, he he he

PostBibleCollegeAtheist

I’ve always enjoyed the religious promoters of abstinence pushing data of rising numbers of HIV infection. Then not acknowledging the numbers are increasing because of ever widening availability of testing.

Yeah, that amused me as well. I recall guy friends as teens stretching condoms over their heads without ripping them. Such delicate creations! *eyeroll*

Alex

Never mind that dropping a water-filled condom off a building onto a passerby is setting up for a very real neck injury — depending on the height of a building and condition of the person who happens to receive an unexpected blow to the head. Douchebaggery through the roof.

amycas

People don’t ignore those “facts.” Most are listed right there on the label for how to use it. If we had real sex education, then people would know and be educated about the other things. The only people hiding any of this information are those who promote abstinence only “education.”

amycas

Thank you, Gringa, for your rational response here. So many people who use this type of contraception claim that it is the bestest of the best kind to use and ignore the fact that it’s hard to follow for most people and user error is high.

Isilzha

It also tells kids to assault people from tall buildings with water filled rubber condoms. Nice to see the true xian values on display.

Deven Kale

I’ve noticed that most people ignore two things about that particular commandment: 1) It’s in the Old Testament, and so technically shouldn’t even matter anymore anyway, and 2) it’s “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” which actually only means don’t lie to people of the same religion.

So the obvious interpretation is, it’s just fine to lie to people- especially if they’re non-believers like us contraceptive using heathens.

Deven Kale

This is especially true considering that sperm tend to be viable inside the uterus for anywhere from 2-5 days. So if you only avoid sex within that 4-5 day window of fertility, there’s still about a 1/5 chance that she’ll end up getting pregnant anyway. In order for it to be as effective as condoms or “the pill,” you’d have to abstain for nearly 2 weeks out of every month, which is nigh impossible for newlyweds.

http://ripeningreason.com/ Bix

That is exactly the analogy they use, along with sunscreen giving people a false sense of security for staying out in the sun. And that is absolutely not a reason to stop using seatbelts, sunscreen, or condoms. It’s only an argument for driving safely, reapplying sunscreen, and looking after one’s sexual health. Their website is completely riddled with logical fallacies, bad science, and ahistorical arguments. They paint themselves as idealistic, but mostly they come across as extraordinarily naive.

rapid seotech

thanks for sharing nice info.

EivindKjorstad

Yeah. Also, the catholic church considers sex a bad thing generally, it’s just that it’s “permissible” if the reason is to become pregnant. You see this in celibacy being considered a holy act, something that is even required of their priests.

Thus it’s not about how efficient the contraception is. It’s about the fact that celibacy is really their prefered thing anyway.

All their bullshit noise about being “sex positive” is, frankly, not believable. At maximum they’re positive of a tiny fraction of sex.

EivindKjorstad

It works okay under certain circumstances:

Stable couple. Woman with stable period. Good self-control. Satisfied with having sex 2-3 weeks out of every 4. Not -too- concerned if a child should result now and then.

For example, a married couple that *do* want kids, but would prefer 2-3 kids rather than 7-10 could probably do fine with this method. It’s not super-effective, but effective enough to reduce the number of children considerably.

But it’s no replacement at all for condoms for a huge set of other circumstances. But that’s okay, because these “sex positive” folks are only in favor of sex at all in certain extremely limited circumstances anyway.

Traveling Txn

I think the argument about seat-belts/ airbags making driving less safe is silly. Anyone who drives recklessly w/ a seat-belt and airbag will drive recklessly w/o since no protective device will save you from damaging an expensive machine (seeing how very few cars are <$1000 I think we can classify them as that) and theres still a good chance of some injury. The safety devices just give you a better chance of continuing to breath when the dust settles.

Similarly with sex though, those that are likely to be reckless in who they take to bed with condoms would probably make similar decisions if they think condoms are ineffective.

Traveling Txn

Waiting for the first news story about someone being charged w/ battery from pegging someone w/ a condom filled w/ water off a building.

http://twitter.com/catdumpling Cat MacKinnon

“…this can therefore mean just about anything you want it to mean.”

i have now decided that “bearing false witness” shall be changed to “slap a turkey”, because “though shalt not slap a turkey against thy neighbor” is about the funniest random thing that’s popped into my head in quite some time and oddly enough, it actually makes MORE sense than the whole “bearing false witness” thing!

Glasofruix

“1) It’s in the Old Testament, and so technically shouldn’t even matter anymore anyway, and”

About that, hippie Jebus of the new testament actually said that what’s written in the OT is still relevant.

punkchobit

Its about time we treat religion as a criminal organization

Biblemajor

The NT is built upon the OT, you can’t have a new without an old. Yes it does matter, and “Thy neighbor” is everyone, if you look up the Greek (dead language, meanings of words never change) its speaking about everyone… more over… why would you want to lie to anyone? isn’t that just morally wrong?

Cheech Wizard

Dropping water filled condoms from a high altitude on unsuspecting people…. now that’s mighty christianly.

Liberated Liberal

That seriously made my day! Funny

Liberated Liberal

I, too, have been using condoms exclusively for 13 years. Only once did the condom not quite stay where it was supposed to, but it still did its job.

Thanks for looking into the statistics. It is a great piece of information to get out there!

And yes, seriously, it’s no big deal to use. Nobody complains.

Liberated Liberal

As was mentioned in Parse’s synopsis, if somebody ends up pregnant while using NFP, they don’t count it as a failure since Catholics are supposed to want that baby anyway. Therefore, NFP is 100% effective (they make it just a few partial percentage points lower to make it seem more believable ;)).

I have not been able to find one single study that tracked this kind of data. Anywhere. Only Catholics claim this with zero proof. I suppose that is what they were trained to do from birth!

I do believe that it works for some, and I completely believe in their right to use it, proudly and happily. But to claim this effectiveness (statistically) with nothing to back it up WHILE spreading malicious misinformation about condoms is horrific.

Liberated Liberal

Any of their “natural” vs “unnatural” business holds absolutely no freaking water with me, because they don’t advocate natural methods in any other avenue of life – natural foods, no alcohol/caffeine/tobacco, they have no problem with medication to prolong life, surgeries to save lives, all things that aren’t “natural” and therefore must be against “God’s will” by their very own reasoning. Clothing, air conditioning, heating, plumbing, cars, airplanes, and just about everything that makes up modern culture is completely and utterly unnatural, so why can’t we argue that it’s all against “God’s plan?”

It’s all ridiculous! The only thing that is against “God’s will” is anything that gives women any sort of empowerment, autonomy or choice. Period. End of story. So yes, women are barren fields to be plowed so that she may be made useful. Nothing but bare dirt until seed is spilled and sprouts appear. Then she is worthy. For a moment. Until it’s winter again or the farmer decides to sow his seeds in younger, more fertile soil.